It begins to look as if we might have been wrong. All those predictions driving us forward throughout history have brought us finally to the unexpected realisation that the future is, suddenly, no longer what it used to be. Oops.
http://2012.dconstruct.org/conference/burke/
James Burke is a living legend. Or, as he put it, “No-one under the age of fifty has heard of me and everyone over the age of fifty thinks I’m dead.”
He is a science historian, an author, and a television presenter. But calling James Burke a television presenter is like calling Mozart a busker. His 1978 series Connections and his 1985 series The Day The Universe Changed remain unparalleled pieces of television brilliance covering the history of science and technology.
Before making those astounding shows, he worked on Tomorrow’s World and went on to become the BBC’s chief reporter on the Apollo Moon missions.
His books include The Pinball Effect, The Knowledge Web, Twin Tracks and Circles.

In the latest London IA Podcast we host a wide-ranging conversation with Cennydd Bowles on moving from user experience design to digital product designer, what it takes to develop visual design skills, freelancing, A List Apart, writing a book, conference speaking and of course that legendary animal of European folklore.
Hosted by Matthew Solle and Andrew Travers. Produced by Will Myddelton and Matthew Solle.

Lately, Augmented Reality (AR) has come to stand for the highest and deepest form of synthesis between the digital and physical worlds. Slavin will outline an argument for rethinking what really augments reality and what the benefits are, as well as the costs.
Rather than considering AR as a technology, we will consider the goals we have for it, and how those are best addressed. Along the way, we’ll look at the history and future of seeing, with a series of stories, most of which are mostly true.
AR may be where all this goes. But how it gets there, and where there is, is up for debate. This is intended to serve to start or end that debate, or at a minimum, to bring the conference to a close by pointing at the future, perhaps in the wrong direction.
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/kevin-slavin
Kevin Slavin is the Managing Director and co-Founder of area/code. He has worked in corporate communications for technology-based clients for 13 years, including IBM, Compaq, Dell, TiVo, Time/Warner Cable, Microsoft, Wild Tangent and Qwest Wireless.
Slavin has lectured at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Parsons School of Design, and has written for various publications on games and game culture. His work has received honors from the AIGA, the One Show, and the Art Directors Club, and he has exhibited internationally, including the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst.

As the times accelerate and we face ever more kaleidoscopic careers, a crucial meta-skill is the ability to learn new skills extremely rapidly, extremely well. That practice has no better exemplar and proponent than Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid-Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. Not surprisingly, he has made himself adept at compelling presentations, this one prepared especially for the Long Now audience.

Jarrett Walker talks to Gerry Gaffney about human transit, in a discussion that has many parallels for UX practitioners. "Think about the question," Jarrett tells us, "before you fall in love with a technology." He describes the need for ongoing education to help planners and residents understand that good transit promotes not just community building, but "the freedom and joy of individual humans." (August 2011.)

Languages are Parallel Universes
"To have a second language is to have a second soul," said Charlemagne around 800 AD. "Each language has its own cognitive toolkit," said psychologist/linguist Lera Boroditsky in 2010 AD.
Different languages handle verbs, distinctions, gender, time, space, metaphor, and agency differently, and those differences, her research shows, make people think and act differently.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/oct/26/how-language-shapes-thought/

In this episode, Paul talks with Paul Romer, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. They discussed Romer's path as an academic turned entrepreneur, who returned to Stanford to explore how the startup dynamic could potentially be applied at the level of developing countries.